The Management of the Afe Babalola Multi-system Hospital (ABMH), has described medical tourism as another capital flight, especially when there are competent and well-equipped home- grown hospitals that can effectively handle such cases.
It said medical tourism abroad, would further impoverished the country’s economy and weaken the health sector.
The Hospital’s management warned against human organ merchandise, saying it does not encourage such practice but only take donations from those who are blood relations, or socially-related to patients in the hospital.
The ABMH’s Chief Medical Director, Dr. Kolawole Ogundipe, who said this in Ado Ekiti, over the weekend, disclosed that the hospital made significant the breakthroughs in kidney transplantation and the general management of renal disease.
gundipe said that the hospital has competent experts and facilities to offer dialysis and treat other chronic kidney diseases that are now on the increase, Ogundipe, said a total of six successful kidney transplants, had been performed in the hospital.
“In all, we have performed six kidney transplants between October and now, and they were all successful. The three most recent included a pediatric kidney patient involving a 15-year old girl and two middle aged men.
“No hospital in Nigeria has the number of dialysis facilities and experts that we parade . The machines runs 400 sections of dialysis monthly. We even have specific machines to treat renal patients with HIV or hapatisis B or C to prevent risk of infection.
“The major challenge has always been how to get the donors. We are always careful to ensure that donors are blood relation or related socially to the patients, so that there won’t be reason for the people to do it for financial benefit. People should not sell their organs, it is against the law.
“Our citizens, especially people of means should stop unnecessary medical tourism abroad, ABMH is a perfect destination of choice that can offer affordable and efficient medical treatments”, Ogundipe said.
Reeling out further medical exploits already recorded by the hospital, Ogundipe disclosed that it had performed over 200 interventional and open heart surgeries within a spate of four years it began operations.
A Consultant Nephrologist and Coordinator of Kidney Transplant Programme in ABMH, Dr. Stephen Oguntola, said the operations were performed by a 10-man team of experts in the hospital.
Oguntola stated that post -transplantation observations of all the patients showed that they are all in stable medical conditions and responding well with good prognosis of full recovery from the renal disease.
Oguntola said: “The 15-year old patient started treatment for systemic Lupus in 2017, which is common in female. She was on medication for five years, after which she developed evidence of kidney disease.
“She had visited many hospitals before being referred here. We did the transplant successfully and she is now making a litre of urine daily.
“The two others are above 40 years. Their renal problems were traceable to long years of hypertension. They have been treated and one of them can now excrete 4.7 litres of urine daily”.
The patients, who interacted with newsmen, applauded the experts for their proficiency and compliance with international best practices, describing their relationships with them as superb and the that the cost was highly affordable.